Warning to Humanity: Second Notice

Sustainability
Pollution
Climate Change
Biodiversity
Water & Watersheds
Disaster
Edward Hessler

It was twenty-five years ago, that "the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists...wrote the 1992 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity." They expressed concern about ozone depletion, availability of freshwater, depletion of marine life, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change and continued human population growth.

It was a manifesto that called attention to a then coming collision: humans and the natural world.

So, on the twenty-fifth anniversary this study was re-examined and our response was evaluated using "available time-series data." It is appropriately titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.What do you think was found?

Not only have we failed but with one notable exception, the stabilization of the atmospheric ozone layer, most of the concerns have gotten worse and appears to be a downward trend.

The current statement was published in a ViewPoint in the journal Bioscience and has been signed by more than 15,000 independent scientists world wide. The supplemental files for both the 1992 and 2017 report are available. I could open them and hope you can as well. The Oxford University Press link, BIOSCI, is not functional but may be by the time you read this.

The Alliance of World Scientists provides another link where you may read the article, view the signers/endorsers and learn about the Alliance, a new, international assembly of scientists.

This may be the final bell. It seems unlikely that there will be a third call. Either progress will have been made or that humanity has slipped too far down the slope.